IT environments generally encompass many objects that are related to each other in some manner. These objects may correspond to both physical entities such as computers and virtual entities such as databases. Managing the objects and their relationships to each other is critical to the smooth operation of any IT environment.
Conventional IT management practices are subject to a number of problems that are common to a wide variety of IT environments. For instance, it is difficult, if not impossible for conventional IT management tools to provide an accurate picture of rapidly evolving IT environments, particularly in the representation of the multiple dependencies and layers of relationships that are typical of any enterprise's IT environment. Consequently, many IT professionals are forced to operate without a complete understanding of their IT environments, and to make decisions that can pose risks to the business operations and reputations of their respective organizations. Further, IT management professionals must spend an inordinate amount of time trying to fix problems that are unintended consequences which result from both routine and emergency changes that occur on a daily basis. Still further, IT management professionals must spend a great deal of time and effort trying to coordinate communications among a vast and diverse group of IT operations staff and other stakeholders who are involved in IT decisions, but conventionally do not have tools to facilitate, record, and learn from the shared experience and knowledge of these IT stakeholders.
Most of the operations management tools used by IT professionals today are not designed to be collaborative, but are instead designed with the attitude that IT management is a relatively closed, closely controlled function that results in isolated “silos” within the IT environment. Further, many conventional solutions such as service desks, configuration management databases (CMDBs), asset management systems, etc. were designed for a previous era, and are missing critical intelligence needed to understand IT environments. These tools were built well before emerging social paradigms existed, and were never intended to exploit the power of collaboration to help capture collective knowledge, improve communication and build rapid alignment around fundamentally better decisions.
Conventional solutions for IT configuration management range from ad-hoc files of information to simple Excel spreadsheets to home grown databases to formal CMDBs. Generally speaking, all these solutions are forms of a database of information about assets. The simple free forms (spreadsheets, text files, etc.) are typically very ad-hoc and hard to maintain. Home grown databases tend to be specific to particular sites, departments or users, and solve one or two pain points adequately, but often do little more than this. These systems tend to be quickly stretched beyond their initial designs and consequently collapse. CMDBs are typically extremely well defined, but are very formal and are rarely implemented and maintained because of the difficulty of inputting the necessary data and keeping it current.
The benefits and disadvantages of a CMDB are well known. Of particular interest in the CMDB case is that the methods by which the data is entered and maintained usually lead to the majority of the data being obsolete. For instance, a vendor that provides the CMDB may install the CMDB and provide manpower to initially input the data, but once the vendor completes this initial data entry, the information in the CMDB may rarely, if ever, be updated to reflect changes in the IT environment.
While IT environments have become increasingly complex, more distributed, and harder to understand with their myriad relationships and dependencies, existing IT management tools have not kept up with these complexities or with the rapid innovation in technology paradigms. CMDBs lack effective ways to capture the power of the collective information that is unstructured within the organization or resident in the collective minds of the employee base.
CMDBs and other conventional tools and systems don't work as well because they fail to provide access to a single up-to-date source of information on physical and virtual devices, policies, people, relationships and knowledge that is necessary to effectively solve many IT challenges. Further, they fail to help users visualize and easily comprehend impacts and risks from multiple diverse and unique vantage points. These tools and systems don't make it substantially easier to get answers, find experts or share information, and they don't facilitate effective collaboration between silos. Conventional tools and systems are very technology-focused and do not capture and utilize the available knowledge of the users who are managing IT infrastructures. Conventional tools and systems do not implement social methodologies with respect to communication and collaboration in the gathering and distribution of information, and consequently fail to harness information that could lead to dramatically more efficient ways to solve companies' daily IT challenges.